Honey
by littledarkangelhippie
Summary: She is a puzzle, and he is the only one in the world willing to piece her together no matter how hard things get.


**A.N.****: So, I spent the past few days getting random bursts of inspiration and kept writing pages of short stories that ended up amounting to ****_this_. I hope you like it.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

**Honey **

There are nights he wakes up with her curled against his side, fast asleep beneath the blankets. He does not dare touch her, knows the repercussions are more bad than good if he crosses the boundaries between them.

He knows she has walls up for a reason.

Most nights, he is alone. He wonders if she is okay where she sleeps, worries if she is warm enough. Winter is as harsh alone as it is together. That never changes.

He does not hope that it will.

The days she spends threading lies around herself are the ones he most often catches her faltering. She winds herself up in his arms and tells him she does not love him.

He knows she doesn't mean it.

The smell of honey follows her everywhere, and he cannot help but recall a day when they had stolen chunks of it from an active hive during the summer in their childhood. How every sting had been worth the sweet taste filling their mouths. He thinks, perhaps, it had soaked right into her bones and molded her into something just as feisty as the bees that swarmed them.

He cannot explain why this makes him feel so light headed.

They spend summer evenings on the porch, sweat sticking their shirts to their backs and the tangy aftermaths of lemonade coating their tongues. They watch the stars together, silently, and he figures it's good they were always so naturally quiet.

He fears they'd break if they weren't.

When he tucks some wayward lock behind her ear, she tells him she doesn't hate him.

He knows this is better than most.

Most would get punched in the jaw.

It takes him a week to notice she's stealing his shirts. He finds them on her bedroom floor when he decides to clean up after her. They are too loose and baggy for her short body, but she takes them nonetheless and only glares when he asks her why.

He decides he doesn't mind so much.

When his hair begins to graze his chin, she offers to cut it. Her fingers are clammy and he feels the scissors skim his skin more than a few times, but when she's done she ruffles his hair and brushes the prickling strands from his shoulders. Almost tenderly.

He thinks she is the only one he'll let near his hair now.

It is spring when he tries and fails to roll over in bed. She is bundled up in his blankets next to him, pressed tight against the wall and clutching his pillows from him. When he tries to slide off the bed, she mumbles a muffled protest into her arm—"No," she says, "it's cold and you're warm."

It is the closest she'll get to sharing her feelings.

He figures this is better than nothing.

Nothing is silence. Nothing is absence.

The flowers he gives her are torn up in pieces, and for a moment he thinks this is answer enough, but he later finds petals wreathed into her hair, and tiny polished shells are piled onto his nightstand that hadn't been there before.

He thinks that is answer enough.

There is a memory of a woman, perhaps his mother, telling him to marry a woman who is warm and loving, and smiles a small smile as she carves spearheads out of fallen branches on the porch during autumn. They are not married—would never marry—but he still thinks of her as his wife.

If he says it out loud, she'll point the spear at his throat and threaten to kill him, even if she never would.

He wonders why it had to be her.

~~...~~X~~...~~

On his way to the bathroom, he finds her on the floor, lying still.

The fear that bubbles its way up to his throat makes it hard to breathe for a few long seconds, and before he knows it, he is dragging her up into his arms and spilling her into the bathtub—the clattering of pill capsules across the tiles and the way she bends, limp and unmoving, beneath his frantic hands, is enough to start some frenzy in his gut.

He doesn't think he can live without her.

A split second he is thanking any deity willing to listen that he's done this before—although every cell in his body hates that he has—and the ends of his fingers press to the back of her throat, slide carefully across the nub to make her wrench and cough and spit around his hand. He does not remember turning the water on, but the poison swirls down the drain and the shower drenches them both to the bone.

She mumbles that she wants to die.

He will not let her go.

He spends an hour washing her, scrubbing the sweat from her skin and the tears staining her face, dresses her in her favorite shirt of his and combs out the tangles from her hair. The fact that she lets him scares him more than he'll let himself admit. He carries her to his bed and wraps her up in his warmest blanket and bundles her up with his softest pillow.

She watches him quietly, and her eyes are filled with conflict, confusion—she says, almost soundlessly, that she doesn't understand, that she shouldn't be saved.

The smile he gives is uncertain.

She is the only one he thinks he'll fight for.

When the sun comes up, she's gone. He searches the entire house for her, scares the thought he'll never see her again, but she steps through the front door almost casually before he can fall apart.

He does not ask her where she's been.

She's wearing shorts under his shirt and her hair is pinned up in a bun, she's barefoot and grass stains her toes faintly green. She carries chunks of honey in her hands, and it smears and slicks her fingers, trails down her feeble wrists and drips onto the floor, around her feet and between the floorboards. It is then that he notices the red marks on her arms, her legs, angry stings from angry bees. Her hair is matted to her head, sticks to her cheeks and neck. Her eyes are tired and she's out of breath and her nose is runny.

She is somehow still so lovely to him.

"I wanted to eat honey with you again," she mutters, scowling up at him. "Like when we were kids."

He does not mean to, but he laughs.

She tries to kick him in the shins.

They sit on the porch to eat. The honey tastes sweeter than he remembers it being and it reminds him, strangely, of the way she hums whenever she cuts his hair. She tells him she likes the way the sunset looks on his skin, as it is deep orange hues and soft pink streaks, painting her hair and her eyes a million things he cannot comprehend.

When she falls asleep against his side, he is still licking off the honey from his fingers—it gleams golden in the sunlight and reflects all of the broken edges of his thoughts back to him. She mumbles a complaint as he lifts her up, but her fingers curl over the collar of his shirt tightly. They are sticky and hot and it brings to mind a time when they were only children, where she holds his hand and pretends he is the princess while she is the noble knight.

He does not think the roles have reversed.

They've only become meaningless.

She tells him, quietly, that she does not understand him.

That she doesn't deserve to be saved.

But she never forgets to cut his hair and she strings the shells she collects for him into necklaces she does not force him to wear—he wears them anyway—and her fingers bleed from all the times she's ever tried to tear her way out of her own mind and she smells like the honey she steals from active hives just for him.

He knows she is the only one worth fighting for.

~~...~~X~~...~~

It's his birthday. Snow has begun to coat the ground outside and frost has begun to paint the glass of every window in the house. The air is cool against his flesh and he bundles himself up as much as he can beneath his blankets.

He doesn't expect a single thing from her, knows that the most he's ever gotten from her in all the time he's known her is a bruised knee from when she pushed him down a hill when he tried to hug her that one time when they were children.

He is surprised, then, when she shakes him awake early in the morning, wearing jackets and gloves and a scarf. She orders him to dress warm and leaves before he can ask what she's doing. He dresses as quickly as he can and stumbles down to the first floor, finds her waiting by the back door with that same serious, impatient look on her face.

She holds out his boots for him to take and waits for him to put them on. When she opens the door, the wind whips in, icy and bitterly biting the skin of his cheeks and ears. He only has a moment to register it before she takes his hand and drags him out with her. The snow crunches and gives as they walk, piled up around the porch and coating every blade of grass there is to coat, and she is leading him out to the shrubbery clustered about the far corner of the yard, where the fence separates them from the small woods further out.

She pulls him to a stop at the thickest one, the branches of which twist into warped shapes that would be impossible to untangle under even the most patient of hands, and whose leaves have begun to wither to black under the harsh weather.

"I found him last month," she says. Her nose is pink and she pulls the scarf up to hide it; he wants to take her back inside, into the warmth of the house, but she would never let him.

She'd hate to know how much he worries about her.

"He likes to eat lettuce the most." She gestures toward the shrubs with both of her arms, as if embracing whatever it is she's talking about. "I call him Snowball because of his fur, but he likes Mr. Mittens better for some reason."

He follows her gaze to the shrubs, and decides to look, as she's been urging him to in that silent way she does. He pulls at the branches carefully and leans over the top slowly. He's glad he's wearing gloves when the thorns poke against the fabric.

"He likes to hide here," she continues, pressing her hands together and lowering her gaze to her feet; she's wearing mittens. "It keeps him safe from the foxes."

It is hard to make out anything in the snow, and it's only because of the dirt and soil intermixing with it that he even finds it in the first place. It is small and fluffy and is curled up in a ball, furrowed in the snow beside a small stone lying between the shrub and the fence. Its fur is so white and clean it blends in almost seamlessly, but the insides of its long ears are a soft pink and the tip of its nose reminds him of a budding rose. It looks soft and cute and he wants to reach a hand out to touch it, but the branches crisscross over one another so tightly he cannot hope to reach it without scratching himself up in the process.

"I was feeding him some of our food," she murmurs, and wipes beneath her nose at the snot beginning to trickle there. "I was thinking, maybe, we can build him a pen to stay in, so the foxes will never get him and he can have a place to come back to."

He can imagine it.

He can imagine her picking some lettuce from the bundle he keeps in the fridge, carrying out the raw vegetables he might've been planning to cook later that night and sneaking the bits and pieces between the wild thorns and watching the small bunny nibble its way through a meal—her sighing as she realized she may have saved the life of another.

He can imagine her gathering it up in her arms, maybe even smiling at it, laughing when it blinks its wide eyes up at her. He can imagine her finally, _finally_, living a normal life, building a simple routine around it, gaining back the sanity that had wrenched itself from her.

He nods and offers a smile. "That sounds like a good idea."

Something about the way her lips twitch up just a little makes him realize she may have been counting on his answer more than she let on, that she may have been thinking about this for far longer than she would ever admit.

This, he thinks, is a very good thing.

He steps around the shrub and wedges himself between the fence and its sharp branches, movements slow and cautious.

"He's not used to being touched," she says, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "Try not to do anything stupid."

That, he knows, is her way of saying, "_Be careful._"

He wants to smile, again, because she is not the kind to worry about others—you have to be strong, or you're just not good enough to live—but all thoughts of smiling evaporates before he can even muster the proper muscles to do so. All remnants of some pointless mirth is swallowed before he can completely soak in her words—or her non-words, in this case.

He can imagine it.

The times she snuck away from bed to tear a few pieces of lettuce and pick a few carrots from the refrigerator just to feed the tiny creature hidden in the bushes in their backyard. The times she stole some bits of bread from their table at dinner to pile onto the ground under the thorns for the feeble critter to find. All those moments lost spent caring for a fragile bunny with fur as white as snow and ears pinker than roses.

He can imagine how much of her patience and attention and rare affection it had taken for her to care about it, how much bravery and courage and trust it took for her to finally tell him and show him.

Lost.

His heart stops and his breath catches and his body is frozen, down to the very core—and she is still talking.

Unknowing.

"He likes the shade, I think. Maybe we can put the pen under the porch. And he liked the flowers you left that one time here, before they died. We should plant some around his home so he can enjoy them. They'll look nice in the spring. He eats a lot, but I think it's because he'll grow up big and strong. He likes the muffins you make—I fed him some once, I don't know if that's bad for him, but he looked hungry. Some hunters almost caught him. I lied and told them he was ours—I didn't tell you, but maybe I should have. His tail looks like a cotton ball. Maybe I should call him cotton ball instead...do you think?"

This is the most he's ever heard her speak in one day.

He wants to cry.

He can't remember a single time in all the years he's known her that she's ever been so excited. He can't remember ever hearing her voice so light or seeing her face so bright.

He has to swallow around the lump in his throat because he knows, _he knows_, this will ruin everything.

Those months spent piecing her back together. Those months spent holding her as she cried herself to sleep. All those nights he had to stop her from hurting herself. All those words he'd told her, every day, just to keep her here, with him, for just a little longer.

He knows it, and he wants to cry.

She does not see it yet.

A soft look has come into her blue, blue eyes and he wants to stop time forever, just so he can see it over and over again. "I'll call him Mr. Cotton. I think he'll like that. We should make some more muffins. He ate the crumbs really fast. I bet he likes them a lot. Maybe—"

"_Annie_," he whimpers, interrupting her.

She blinks at him. "_Are_ muffins bad for bunnies? I hadn't known."

He doesn't want to say it. He doesn't want to do this to her. He doesn't want this moment to end.

If there was just some way to stop time forever, he would do whatever it took. Anything, anything at all.

_Just please, please don't let her lose all of her hope again_.

He stoops down as best he can, sliding his hands under the small little bundle of pure white fluff as carefully as he can possibly manage—the thorns scrape against his coat and nearly nicks his ears.

"We should make a bed inside for him. He might be cold," she says, and turns to go back inside.

"Annie, wait," he says, and hopes she does not listen.

But she does.

But she does and he wonders why—_why, when you rarely ever do any other day?—_and she looks back over her shoulder at him.

"What is it?" she asks, and her tone is utterly genuine.

He has never heard Annie sound so gentle.

He wants to run away.

But he holds his ground.

Never in his entire life has he ever seen Annie look so hopeful. Not once since the day he met her, two small children eating honey in the summertime; two small children playing make-believe in the forest.

He cradles the white bundle to his chest, and his large hands cover it almost entirely; her brow furrows and she takes a step toward him. "Be careful," she says, and the words stab so deep into his chest he cannot breathe for a few split seconds. "You might hurt him."

He shakes his head.

He wishes so much that she would just walk away.

"It—He...might've gotten caught in the thorns," he finally chokes out. "Or...the foxes...might've hurt him before he made it in completely. He...there's so much... Annie, he's covered in..."

"What are you saying?" she snaps, and that impatient, serious look comes over her face. "I need to go make him a bed to sleep in. We can deal with the foxes tomorrow. They can't get in anyway." She turns again.

"Annie—Annie, _please_," he calls. _Don't make this harder than it has to be._

She ignores him.

It takes every ounce of his being to say the words he hadn't wanted to—he has never seen Annie so determined to care for another living creature and it's tearing him apart knowing he has to be the one to ruin it.

"He's dead, Annie."

She stops short. She is only a step or so away from the porch. She is only a step or so away from her pain.

She turns very slowly.

He looks down at the bundle in his hands. "The fur on his stomach is covered in blood—the foxes might've bitten him and he probably got away and made it back here, but...he probably bled out... Or—or he was trying to hide better and the thorns tore his skin and...he... His eyes are open, Annie. He's not breathing. I... I'm so sorry—I—"

He looks back up, but she is already gone.

He is alone.

He falls to his knees and cradles the bundle into his chest.

He cries.

He cannot remember a single time he had ever seen so much hope in her eyes.

~~...~~X~~...~~

He finds her in his bed—not the bathroom with a bottle of pills or her bedroom with a knife poised at her delicate throat.

His bed, hugging her favorite pillow of his, wearing her favorite shirt of his, wrapped up in her favorite blanket of his.

This, he thinks, is a good sign.

He sits beside her, and he figures this is all he can do. He has buried a grave and marked it with flowers, he has cleaned the snow of blood and thrown his gloves and coat into the washer so that the evidence would be eradicated, so that she would not have to see any more of all her ruined hard work stained into his own clothes. He cannot do any more than what he has. He has settled himself down to the thought that this is as far as he will get in comforting her.

Until she winds herself up into his arms. Her tears smear across his collarbone, drench into his shirt, and she shakes so violently against him. He holds her because he can do nothing more.

She grounds out between her teeth that she wants to kill herself.

He does not mean to, but he says, "Mr. Cotton would've wanted you to live."

The fact that she freezes—tears stop, body stills, arms slacken around him—scares him more than he'll ever admit.

He hurries on to explain himself. "You saved him, after all. You fed him and protected him and gave him a safe place to come to whenever he was scared. You gave him a reason to live, just like he gave _you _a reason to live. Things sometimes work out like this, and it's terrible when they do, I know, but you have to understand that he—Mr. Cotton—wouldn't have wanted you to die. He'd want you to live just like you had given him the chance to. He came here in his time of need because he trusted you. He...died knowing he was safe, for the moment...because of you."

For a few minutes, he thinks she'll punch him in the stomach and shout at him, but she is silent.

He does not know if this is a bad thing.

Until she gives a very soft, very gentle laugh.

"You—Bertholdt," she mumbles against his shoulder, and her fingers curl into his shirt. "You're so stupid."

He thinks this is the closest she'll get to ever saying what she really means.

He takes it.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: Well. This is what happens when I become obsessed with a couple. Don't judge me u.u**

**Anyway, thanks for reading and please review!**


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